Computer and Web Articles

You told your webmaster to make sure that music plays the instant a visitor arrives on your homepage. I mean, you LOVE that music; it just gives the right “feel” to your site. It really sets the tone and represents your company’s products and/or services.  The music makes your website feel more relaxing/energetic/fun/enter your own adjective here.

As a professional web designer, I strongly urge you to consider not automatically playing music upon your visitors’ arrival to your website. Why?

• Your visitor might already have music playing on her computer’s speakers – trying to play your song play over the top of your visitor’s music is rude, and it’s pretty darn confusing when one suddenly hears two songs playing at once.
• Your audio file could potentially be causing your site to load much, much slower than it should be loading.  This detracts from your users’ overall experience while on your site.
• Your visitor might have his speakers turned off or his audio on mute.  What’s the point of playing music if this is the case (especially if the music is slowing down your site)?
• Your visitor might be viewing your website at a location where things need to be kept quiet – such as a work cubicle, or their living room at night after the baby has been put to sleep.  These people will assure you that they do NOT appreciate sudden, unexpected noise coming from their computer.
• It may be difficult to believe, but I guarantee you that many, many visitors to your site will really, really dislike your music.

Unless you’re a musician, singer, or band, people likely visit your website to learn more about you, your products, and/or your services. They didn’t come to listen to music that you thought was cool.

If you really, really, really love your music, the very least you can do is give visitors the option to press a Play button if THEY want to listen to that music. And go ahead — track the number of clicks that Play button receives.  You might be surprised at the incredibly high percentage of visitors that pass on the option of playing that funky music.

1. http://tinyurl.com/y9dtemq - Learn how to hide your Facebook friends list.
2. http://tinyurl.com/5q86qh - Mac users: Work faster and more efficiently with these helpful Mac OS X keyboard shortcuts.
3. http://lifehacker.com/5205629 - And here we have Lifehacker’s “Top 10 Must-Have Firefox Extensions, 2009 Edition” post. Enjoy.
4. http://tinyurl.com/ybtmy4e - Check the ergonomic fitness of your workstation with this useful checklist.
5. http://tinyurl.com/lylxob - Five beliefs that limit productivity – and how to overcome them.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and make a bold assumption: you don’t use your Windows XP built-in search every day, do you? I bet you don’t even use it once a week, right? Actually, now that I think about it, I’m going to go ahead and guess that entire months go by without you using that search functionality—yes?

I knew it! My powers of assumption appear to be incredibly on-point today. So now that we’ve confirmed you don’t use XP’s built in search on a regular basis, let’s take advantage of this information to speed up your computer a bit, shall we?

Today we’ll be turning off your Windows Indexing Service, a service that reduces the performance and speed of your computer by constantly, furiously running in the background in an effort to update an index of alllllll the files on your system—just so that your Windows XP searches will execute as fast as possible. You know, those searches you never conduct.

All we need to do to give our Windows Indexing Service a well needed, permanent rest is…

• Click on Start > Control Panel
• Click on Add/Remove Programs
• Look over in the left-hand column of the window that pops up. Click Add/Remove Windows Components
• Uncheck Indexing Service
• [Bonus tip: If you never use Windows Messenger (and it’s very likely you do not), uncheck that box too!]
• Click Next, then Finish.

Now just look how fast your computer is zooming about! All done, great job.

I recently came across a wonderful article written by Trenton Moss that discussed the importance of credibility in business websites.

Web credibility is all about presenting your business on your website in such a way that you come across as trustworthy and knowledgeable. (And … hopefully you truly are both of those things… Right?)

Making adjustments and updates that result in a more credible website can reap huge rewards for your business, so have a look at Trenton’s five recommendations for making your business website more credible (and therefore more effective):

1. You must prove there’s a real organization behind your website.
2. Your website needs to provide ‘sensitive’ information.
3. All statements and claims should be backed up by third-party evidence.
4. There has to be proof that your organization is growing and has clients.
5. Your website needs to have an air of professionalism and confidence.

If your company has its own website (and I really, really hope it does), I highly recommend you read Trenton’s complete article, which can be found right here: http://tinyurl.com/ybbcy86.

1. http://tinyurl.com/ylpwyuu - Fifty amazingly realistic computer-generated portraits. Several of these works of art will have you scratching your head and thinking, “Wait, what? That isn’t … real??”
2. http://tinyurl.com/crmohg - How to mine Twitter for business leads.
3. http://tinyurl.com/davnn2 - Mac Users Only: NameChanger saves you oodles of time and effort by quickly renaming batches of files for you, all at once.
4. http://lifehacker.com/5342899/ - A popular 2009 “top 10″ post on the fantastic Lifehacker blog: “Top 10 Tricks MacGyver would be proud of.” (Fix a car door dent with canned air and a hair dryer, anyone?)
5. www.pdftoword.com – An excellent (and free!) online PDF-to-Word conversion tool.

Attention all Summit County business owners! Jason Brewer of SnowHome Properties keeps a regularly updated blog in which he posts news about the people and events in our county.  His blog can be found right here: http://news.snowhome.com.

Here’s the sweet news: he’s currently offering a free blog post to any interested local businesses (other than realtors).

It’s a great win-win situation for everyone involved; Jason gets to add great content and potentially attract more visitors to his blog while you get to have your business featured and seen by all who visit the blog. Several businesses have already taken advantage of Jason’s offer, including Stillpoint Massage and Wellness Center of Frisco, the Qi Gong Institute of Summit County, and the Colorado Workforce Center.

Interested in making your business a featured business? It’s easy and free. Just contact Jason at Jason@SnowHome.com to learn more.

1. http://tinyurl.com/me5p56 - A great gift idea for the bakers in your life, this clever apron boasts an upside-down measurement conversion chart that’s sure to help out during those momentary blips when questions like “Wait, how many tablespoons are in 1 oz?” are met with a blank mind.
2. www.DryEraseMagic.com – Have a look at the “ONLY paint on the market that can create dry erase surfaces absolutely anywhere!!”
3. http://tinyurl.com/yfr6rpj - I noticed that this nice looking “smart” money clip is made up of high tech stainless steel. I’m not clear on the difference between high-tech stainless steel and low-tech stainless steel. Are you?
4. http://tinyurl.com/yb2fqrq - A beautiful photo. Of a cityscape. Made entirely of staples.
5. http://tinyurl.com/ykxq6xd - Amazon’s Gift Organizer lets you “keep track of gift ideas, holidays, past purchases, birthdays, and more.” They proclaim their Gift Organizer is the only tool you’ll *ever* need to plan and track all of your gift-giving. Interested? Have a look and see if you agree with their claim.

1. http://tinyurl.com/yftyyb2 - Is Twitter all Sound and Fury, signifying nothing? Take a look at this nifty, simple, colorful diagram to get a bird’s-eye understanding of the Twitter community – and how it would appear if it was represented by 100 people.
2. http://tinyurl.com/yeyjrxz - SO COOL. This short little video story shows choice architecture at its very best and is a wonderful illustration of how people can encourage others to change their actions for the better simply by making alternatives fun and interesting.
3. www.freeprintable.net – Great, FREE printable files that you can customize for your business and personal life, then print out on your inkjet or laser printer. Examples of the files you can grab for free include fax cover sheets, invoice templates, stationery, time sheets, resume templates, thank you letters, and product quotes.
4. http://tinyurl.com/yfgygya - Use this handy (and free) online cashflow calculator to see “the effects of sales, inventory, credit terms, and other variables on your company’s cashflow.” If you’d instead like to gain a better understanding of cashflow affects the inner workings of your company, I recommend  reading http://tinyurl.com/yl3tt8y and then http://tinyurl.com/yduv4fu.
5. www.mapmywalk.com – Easily learn the distance traveled, elevation accumulated, and other statistics relating to your walks. Use this free website to track your neighborhood treks and have fun while staying motivated. Thanks to Ivy Parish (of Silverthorne) and her daughter for the recommendation!

Take a look at the homepage of your company’s website.

Is it possible that you’re overwhelming visitors with massive amounts of information? Are you inducing information-overload comas that turn people away from your site?  A common—yet easily fixed—mistake found on the homepages of many business websites is the presentation of too much information.

When passers-by take a look at the menus posted outside of restaurants when determining whether they’d like to walk in and ask for a table, they’re not interested in learning about the restaurant’s 15 year history, the background of the owner, or the various local events the restaurant sponsors. These people are interested in seeing what food the restaurant serves and, possibly, the costs of the various dishes offered.

What are your potential customers looking for when they arrive at your website? What are the *first pieces* of information they’re looking to find?

Relocate secondary details about your company and services/products to internal pages within your site and, to the best of your abilities, remove extraneous, “fluffy” adjectives and details completely.

Doing so will make your customers and potential customers much happier–and much more likely to spend additional time on the other pages within your site.